5 Culture Metrics You Should Be Tracking in 2019

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Chiradeep is a content marketing professional with 8 Years+ experience in corporate communications, marketing content, brand management, and advertising.

Over the course of his tenure, he’s worked on several big-ticket projects, led and trained a variety of teams, and been instrumental in driving delivery quality, timeline adherence, and talent harvesting.

It’s the end of another year and even as you look forward to setting your business goals for 2019, it’s a good idea to take stock of the organizational culture. Here are five company culture metrics that can help you evaluate if your culture is set for success.

Senior leadership in SMBs across the globe are beginning to realize that company culture is intrinsically tied to business success. However, culture has long been considered too abstract, subjective and intangible for it to be measured which makes its alignment to business objectives especially challenging.

A big part of company culture and measuring its effectiveness is left to the HR manager. Often, surveys are created which are designed to gauge employee satisfaction and culture quality. As much as these smile sheets are necessary, they are just the first step. Forward-thinking HR professional must leverage various tools at hand in order to create a lasting connection between employees and management, as well as envision a strong organizational culture.

Next up is the question on metrics. As the year comes to a close, it’s a good time to consider some of the key metrics that indicate if a company is a good, happy place to work. There aren’t a lot of solutions that can actually quantify and measure workplace culture (startup WorkXO does have a working model and a proprietary analytics technology). There are, however, a set of clear and undeniable indicators of quality of corporate culture. Here are our recommendations for company culture metrics:

Employee Referrals

The math here is very simple. If the employee likes an organization they work in, often, they refer their friends and family. Employee referrals must make up at least 25 percent of the total hires for an organization. This means the best talent in a company is helping pick and choose familiar and recognizable applicants who’ll expand the talent pool. On the other hand, if you’re posting and hiring unknowns which means there’s something definitely wrong with your organizational culture.

Internal Transfers

Smart organizations let employees move between functions and different divisions, sharing insights and upskilling as and when possible. This will create a vibrant and thriving environment of collaboration, leadership, and growth. On the flipside, if your employees are trapped in their roles, they’ll soon outgrow daily assignments, hang around for a while, and will soon move on to other possibilities.

Employee Assistance Programs

If you have 100+ employees in 2019, in terms of size and scale, an Employee Assistance Program or EAP is essential. Today, in the complex times we live in, employees regularly require support on legal, financial, and mental health issues. EAPs are known to deliver a $6.47 return on investment for every $1 spent but utilization remains surprisingly low, at just 7%.

An EAP program makes reaching out and seeking help a streamlined activity, and even as an HR lead, you’re assured that the organization has done its best to help a worker. This will also push employee loyalty and allow them to gradually get back their work focus. The number of requests processed by your EAP is a vital company culture metric.

Attrition Rates

No matter how solid your organization is, people are always going to leave. First, how you deal with them on their way out, is a huge contributor to overarching organizational goodwill among internal and external stakeholders. Second, if your churn rate is above 7 to 8%, there has to be something that’s going wrong. The simple axiom, here, is that people who are appreciated, enjoy their work, feel a sense of belonging, and are well paid, simply don’t job hunt.

Wellness and Work-Life Balance

Workplace wellness is now a direct indicator of how a company treats its employees. A small business must have a clearly-outlined wellness policy at work, covering both physical and mental health issues. It must also allow employees to find the time to step away from work and participate in recreational activities, energizing both body and mind. No ecosystem of culture and productivity is complete without a wellness policy.

“We surveyed more than 2,000 full-time employees to understand what culture looks like in organizations today, what constitutes a high-performing culture, and how the employee experience impacts business success,” said Kim Dawson, Director of Employee Experience at YouEarnedIt, a rewards & recognition platform. “Employees today expect a better employee experience, yet many businesses are still using outdated and ineffective strategies to approach engagement and retention.” You can read her 10 building blocks for exceptional company culture here.

There’s no debating or dissing how culture impacts a company’s instinct for creativity and innovation. At its most basic, it energizes employees and in its refined avatar and when done right, can reimagine productivity and profitability. As we step into a new year and SMBs look at pushing the pedal to the metal, these company culture metrics will empower and revitalize your company culture blueprint and strategies.